The morning came before the sun had fully risen, cold still settled in the stone floors, the estate quiet except for the birds that had come back to the tree line sometime in the last few weeks.

Nythera had left two days ago.

She had not announced it as a departure. She had simply told me, the evening before, that the vampire clans needed to know she was alive and that she would find me at the academy when she was done.

The chair by the window had been empty since.

I packed some clothes and the dairy, the inventory carrying everything else. I pulled on my coat and went downstairs and stepped out into the morning air and found Sebastian standing beside a carriage at the gate, dressed.

The carriage had the Ardyn ducal crest on the door.

"Young Duke. The academy road is clear. We should reach the city by evening if we leave within the hour."

I nodded and reached for the carriage door.

I opened it and stopped.

!!!

Lina was sitting inside.

Corner of the seat, knees together, hands in her lap, bag on the floor beside her feet.

What is she doing here.

I looked at Sebastian.

Sebastian looked at the middle distance with the expression of a man who had made a professional decision not to be involved in this particular moment.

I looked back at Lina.

She had not moved.

"You were supposed to go with Aria."

"I did. And then I came here."

"How."

"I asked Sebastian where you were going and when you were leaving. He told me."

I looked at Sebastian again.

"She asked very directly," Sebastian said, to the middle distance.

"Aria agreed, She said it was fine. She said— She said you would probably not argue about it if I was already in the carriage."

I stood at the open door.

The morning was cold. The ducal crest caught the early light. Inside, Lina sat in the corner looking up at me.

I thought about the academy entrance examination. The A-Class placement process. Elian Voss somewhere in that building. Sylvaine Valtier was already ahead of me on the road south.

And a girl with an S+ rank and a wind spirit.

I got in.

Lina shifted slightly to give me room and went back to looking out the window, bag between her feet.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

The gate passed behind us.

Then Sebastian opened the front window and passed something back through it without commenting on a sealed letter with Aria’s handwriting on the front, addressed to me.

I broke the seal and read it.

She talked about you every day for two weeks. I am sending her with you before she talks about you for a third. Do not lose her.

I folded it and put it in my coat.

Looked at Lina.

She was still looking out the window. Unaware that I had just read a letter that summarized the last two weeks of her life in one sentence.

I decided not to mention it.

***

We stopped at midday to water the horses and stretch.

I stepped out first. The plains had given way to the lower foothills, the road narrowing slightly, the mountains visible now at the horizon.

I turned around to offer a hand down.

Lina was in the middle of stepping out and looked up at the same moment I looked up and our faces ended up considerably close.

She froze.

She made a small sound.

Then she turned away from me entirely and raised both hands and pressed them flat against her face.

I looked at her for a moment.

Then I reached over and took both her hands by the wrists and moved them away from her face.

She looked at me.

"Hello,"

She stared at me.Her face was completely red.

"Hello," she said, very quietly.

I let go of her wrists and stepped back.

Behind me I heard her take a breath.

Sebastian had positioned himself beside the horses and was looking at the road ahead.

I appreciated that about Sebastian.

We got back in the carriage.

Lina sat in her corner. Her face had returned to normal.

I did not comment on it.

"Mist...Kae..," she said, not looking away from the window.

"What."

"I remembered something else. About the summoning." She was quiet for a moment. "The contract was not mine originally. Someone gave it to me. I do not remember who yet. But I remember that someone gave it to me and told me to use it and I trusted them and I used it anyway even though it was too large."

She said it as though she was filing a report.

I looked at her.

"When did you remember that."

"Three days ago."

"You waited three days to tell me."

"....."

Outside the window the foothills deepened and somewhere ahead the mountains waited and somewhere past the mountains the city waited and somewhere inside it the story the novel had been building from the beginning was already moving without us.

"Alright,"

Lina nodded once and kept looking out the window.

The carriage moved south.

***

(Lina POV)

Sylph had been circling the window for the past hour.

"You already know what you want to do," Sylph said finally, settling on the windowsill.

"I know what I am considering."

"You have been considering it for three days."

"Some things need to be thought through properly."

Lina sat up and looked at the room around her. The guest quarters Aria had arranged were comfortable and well-maintained and entirely not the room she had woken up in when she first arrived here.

"He left,".

"Yes."

"Without saying anything."

"He left you with Aria and told her your condition and arranged for your academy registration, That is not nothing."

"I know it is not nothing."

"But."

Lina looked at the window.

.

She remembered his arm.

She had gripped it like it was the only solid thing available and he had never once moved it away.

"I want to go,"

"What!"

"He will probably say I was supposed to stay with Aria."

"Probably."

"But Aria already knows. I talked to her this morning."

Sylph turned on the windowsill.

"What did she say."

Lina smiled.

"She said to get in the carriage."

***

She found Sebastian at the gate twenty minutes later.

He looked at her bag. Then at her. Then he opened the carriage door without saying anything, which was the most useful thing anyone had done for her all morning.

She got in and sat in the corner and put her bag on the floor and folded her hands in her lap.

Her heart was already beating fast.

Settle down, she thought, to herself, to her heart, to whoever was responsible for the current situation.

Nothing settled.

She heard footsteps on the path outside.

The door opened.

He looked exactly the way he had looked every morning. She could half-remember standing in a doorway coat on, bag over one shoulder.

He stopped when he saw her.

The memories came back.

Her face was getting warm.

She kept her expression where it was through sheer determination and looked at him with what she hoped...

He looked at Sebastian.

Sebastian looked at the middle distance.

He looked back at her.

Then he got in.

The carriage started moving and she turned to look out the window because looking out the window was a reasonable thing to do and also because her expression was not in control.

Sylph was laughing in the back of her awareness.

Not helpful, Lina thought.

I know, Sylph said. I am doing it anyway.

They stopped at midday.

She was in the middle of stepping out of the carriage when she looked up and found his face considerably closer than she had been prepared for.

Everything stopped.

Her heart, which had been behaving with approximate normalcy for the last few hours, immediately abandoned all pretense of normalcy.

She turned away from him. Raised both hands and pressed them flat against her face which was a completely unreasonable response to the situation and did nothing whatsoever to address it because her ears were visible above her hands and they were warm too.

She heard him take a step.

Then both her wrists were in his hands and her hands were being moved away from her face with the same calm certainty he applied to everything and there was nothing she could do about it because she had forgotten how to move.

He looked at her.

Her face was completely red and she knew it was completely red and there was nothing to be done about that either.

"Hello,"

She stared at him.

"Hello,"

He let go of her wrists and stepped back and looked at the mountains.

She stood beside the carriage and breathed and told her heart to behave and her heart declined.

The afternoon passed.

Lina watched all of it.

She did not say much. There was too much happening inside her head to also be happening outside it, and Sylph had mercifully gone quiet.

She was looking out the window at the last of the afternoon when he spoke.

"Wanna hug before sleep."

She turned her head.

He was looking at the ceiling.

"What!"

"You have been quiet all day. So. Wanna hug."

Her face was red again. She could feel it happening and could not stop it.

"You are trying to make a joke,"

"A little."

"It was not very good."

"No," he agreed.

She looked at him for a moment.

Then she turned back to the window.

Her face was still warm.

"I am fine,".

"Yup" he said.

"I was just thinking."

"Yeah."

Outside the window the inn appeared around a bend in the road,

"Mis..."

"What."

She looked at her hands in her lap.

"Thank you. For the carriage. For not saying I had to stay."

He was quiet for a moment.

"You were already in the carriage, there was not much to decide."

She smiled.

"Still,"

The carriage stopped. Sebastian opened the door from outside.

She picked up her bag.

Her face was still slightly warm.

She had decided to stop being embarrassed about that and had not entirely succeeded.